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Although the Mediterranean Sea is a crucial hotspot in marine biodiversity, it has been threatened by numerous anthropogenic pressures. As flagship species, Cetaceans are exposed to those anthropogenic impacts and global changes. Assessing their conservation status becomes strategic to set effective management plans. The aim of this paper is to understand the habitat requirements of cetaceans, exploiting the advantages of a machine-learning framework. To this end, 28 physical and biogeochemical variables were identified as environmental predictors related to the abundance of three odontocete species in the Northern Ionian Sea (Central-eastern Mediterranean Sea). In fact, habitat models were built using sighting data collected for striped dolphins Stenella coeruleoalba, common bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus, and Risso's dolphins Grampus griseus between July 2009 and October 2021. Random Forest was a suitable machine learning algorithm for the cetacean abundance estimation. Nitrate, phytoplankton carbon biomass, temperature, and salinity were the most common influential predictors, followed by latitude, 3D-chlorophyll and density. The habitat models proposed here were validated using sighting data acquired during 2022 in the study area, confirming the good performance of the strategy. This study provides valuable information to support management decisions and conservation measures in the EU marine spatial planning context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Anemia is one of the global public health problems that affect children and pregnant women. Anemia occurs when the level of red blood cells within the body decreases or when the structure of the red blood cells is destroyed or when the Hb level in the red blood cell is below the normal threshold, which results from one or more increased red cell destructions, blood loss, defective cell production or a depleted sum of Red Blood Cells. Methods: The method used in this study is divided into three phases: the datasets were gathered, which is the palm, pre-processed the image, which comprised; Extracted images, and augmented images, segmented the Region of Interest of the images and acquired their various components of the CIE L*a*b* colour space (also referred to as the CIELAB), and finally developed the proposed models for the detection of anemia using the various algorithms, which include CNN, k-NN, Nave Bayes, SVM, and Decision Tree. The experiment utilized 527 initial datasets, rotation, flipping and translation were utilized and augmented the dataset to 2635. We randomly divided the augmented dataset into 70%, 10%, and 20% and trained, validated and tested the models respectively. Results: The results of the study justify that the models performed appropriately when the palm is used to detect anemia, with the Naïve Bayes achieving a 99.96% accuracy while the SVM achieved the lowest accuracy of 96.34%, as the CNN also performed better with an accuracy of 99.92% in detecting anemia. Conclusions: The invasive method of detecting anemia is expensive and time-consuming; however, anemia can be detected through the use of non-invasive methods such as machine learning algorithms which is efficient, cost-effective and takes less time. In this work, we compared machine learning models such as CNN, k-NN, Decision Tree, Naïve Bayes, and SVM to detect anemia using images of the palm. Finally, the study supports other similar studies on the potency of the Machine Learning Algorithm as a non-invasive method in detecting iron deficiency anemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estuaries play a crucial role in the maintenance of the ecological balance of coastal ecosystems. Salinity intrusion can disrupt these fragile ecosystems, impacting aquatic life and human activities in coastal regions. An accurate prediction of salinity intrusion is essential for managing water resources and preserving ecosystems. This paper introduces a novel hybrid tool, called Hybrid-EBM model, designed to predict the salt-wedge intrusion length and the salinity at river mouth of an estuary. Combining the state-of-the-art Estuary Box Model (EBM) with machine learning algorithms, the new Hybrid-EBM model provides an accurate forecast of the salinity intrusion events. Experimental results highlight the effectiveness of Hybrid-EBM in salinity prediction with an RMSE of 3.41 psu against the 4.22 obtained by EBM. The outputs of this paper represent a significant advancement in the understanding of the impacts of salinity intrusion along the estuarine ecosystems, contributing to the sustainability of the coastal regions worldwide. • Salt-wedge intrusion into estuaries can seriously damage these ecosystems. • A new hybrid-model is proposed to predict salt-wedge intrusion events into estuaries. • The presented hybrid-model combines machine learning and physics-based models. • This hybrid model outperforms the state-of-the-art models. • The study provides valuable insight into salt-wedge intrusion impact on ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the problem of how data representation influences the generalization error of kernel based learning machines like support vector machines (SVM) for classification. Frame theory provides a well founded mathematical framework for representing data in many different ways. We analyze the effects of sparse and dense data representations on the generalization error of such learning machines measured by using leave-one-out error given a finite amount of training data. We show that, in the case of sparse data representations, the generalization error of an SVM trained by using polynomial or Gaussian kernel functions is equal to the one of a linear SVM. This is equivalent to saying that the capacity of separating points of functions belonging to hypothesis spaces induced by polynomial or Gaussian kernel functions reduces to the capacity of a separating hyperplane in the input space. Moreover, we show that, in general, sparse data representations increase or leave unchanged the generalization error of kernel based methods. Dense data representations, on the contrary, reduce the generalization error in the case of very large frames. We use two different schemes for representing data in overcomplete systems of Haar and Gabor functions, and measure SVM generalization error on benchmarked data sets. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Anemia is a condition in which the oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells is insufficient to meet the body's physiological needs. It affects billions of people worldwide. An early diagnosis of this disease could prevent the advancement of other disorders. Traditional methods used to detect anemia consist of venipuncture, which requires a patient to frequently undergo laboratory tests. Therefore, anemia diagnosis using noninvasive and cost-effective methods is an open challenge. The pallor of the fingertips, palms, nail beds, and eye conjunctiva can be observed to establish whether a patient suffers from anemia. This article addresses the above challenges by presenting a novel intelligent system, based on machine learning, that supports the automated diagnosis of anemia. This system is innovative from different points of view. Specifically, it has been trained on a dataset that contains eye conjunctiva photos of Indian and Italian patients. This dataset, which was created using a very strict experimental set, is now made available to the Scientific Community. Moreover, compared to previous systems in the literature, the proposed system uses a low-cost device, which makes it suitable for widespread use. The performance of the learning algorithms utilizing two different areas of the mucous membrane of the eye is discussed. In particular, the RUSBoost algorithm, when appropriately trained on palpebral conjunctiva images, shows good performance in classifying anemic and nonanemic patients. The results are very robust, even when considering different ethnicities. • This paper provides novel contributions to some of the open problems discussed in the literature • A novel noninvasive and cost-effective system, based on machine learning, to support the automated diagnosis of anemia • A device and software system designed for widespread use trained and tested on the novel public Eyes-defy-anemia dataset • A novel public dataset provided to the Scientific Community is described • An important step toward a deeper understanding of computer-aided systems to support physicians during anemia diagnosis [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]